


rooftop chat

by hestiaandhercat



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dwahan!Master has no rights but let me pretend, F/M, I like it when they climb somewhere and have a talk, Sad, feral bastards the both of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24128635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hestiaandhercat/pseuds/hestiaandhercat
Summary: He sits down on the picnic blanket with a heavy thud. It’s the first time he has stretched his limbs since he escaped the Kasavin dimension and he realizes how much he is aching. Good. Pain is good. It reminds him that he is alive.“Are you actually upset that I tried to kill the human race again? At this point I kinda thought you were expecting me to.”“Silly me.” She doesn’t look in his direction, instead glances over the rooftops that are stretched out below them, even more red in the light of a dying sun and as pretty as if they had been painted in blood. “And I genuinely thought you had changed.”“But why would I?” He laughs, because that seems the better of the two options in his stunted emotional vocabulary. “Admit it, you love the way I am.”She turns to him, then, a fire in her eyes that reminds him of people screaming and the smell of rotten flesh and Gallifrey burning. It had looked so pretty when it burned. He wonders if she would be even more beautiful.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	rooftop chat

He arrives in a storm of fury to find her sitting on the rooftop with two wine glasses on a picnic blanket. It is so much something he didn’t expect that he almost does a double take and calms down, but that wouldn’t exactly be Koschei’s style, and so he doesn’t.  
“How dare you”, he says instead, pointing his sonic at her as if he is going to hurt her even though they both know he won’t.  
“How dare I cross your ingenious masterplan to destroy the world once again?” She turns and he can see that she is hurt and angry and in pain, even though she is trying to hide it, and that should make him happy, but it just makes him tired. He sits down on the picnic blanket with a heavy thud. It’s the first time he has stretched his limbs since he escaped the Kasavin dimension and he realizes how much he is aching. Good. Pain is good. It reminds him that he is alive.  
“Are you actually upset that I tried to kill the human race again? At this point I kinda thought you were expecting me to.”  
“Silly me.” She doesn’t look in his direction, instead glances over the rooftops that are stretched out below them, even more red in the light of a dying sun and as pretty as if they had been painted in blood. “And I genuinely thought you had changed.”  
“But why would I?” He laughs, because that seems the better of the two options in his stunted emotional vocabulary. “Admit it, you love the way I am.”  
She turns to him, then, a fire in her eyes that reminds him of people screaming and the smell of rotten flesh and Gallifrey burning. It had looked so pretty when it burned. He wonders if she would be even more beautiful.  
“It hurts”, she says and he wants to hug her and burn her and make her kneel. “Why do you always have to hurt so much?”  
Because it’s the only thing I can do to prove to myself that I’m still alive.  
“It’s fun”, he says and smiles one of his manic smiles.  
“I brought wine”, she says, ignoring him.  
“So I see. What is this, a token of friendship or deadly poison?”  
“As if I’d ever sink that low.”  
“Ouch.” He only realizes how long it’s been since he has had anything to drink when he finds himself emptying the glass in one long gulp. Bodily needs are so terribly unimportant when you’ve got a whole universe to destroy.  
Theta hands him the other glass without comment and for a moment their hands almost touch and it makes something inside him howl for a familiarity that they have lost many bodies ago. He can imagine how well she’d fit into the crook of his elbow, the protective cave of his arms, but he also knows that she’d be kicking and screaming and possibly pushing him off the roof if he tried, so he doesn’t.  
“So why are we here, exactly?”, he asks once he has emptied the second glass as well. He still finds himself terribly parched and casts a searching glance around for the bottle, but can’t find it anywhere.  
“Why are you like this again?”, she replies with her own question. “You were doing so well.”  
“Being tamed by you, you mean.”  
“Was that so bad?”  
“I am not your pet.”  
“Neither am I yours.”  
He laughs. “Give me another two planetary alien invasions at most and that might change.”  
For a moment he thinks she might punch him, but she just turns away again, surveying the landscape. Paris is pretty this time of year, he thinks. It would be even prettier if it was aflame, but you can’t have everything.  
“I really thought we could go back to the way we were when we were children”, she says after a silence that stretches on far too long for his comfort.  
She still doesn’t know, of course she doesn’t, he hasn’t told her, and it makes him angry and sad and hungry all at once.  
“We can’t”, he says, and he doesn’t say that he wishes they could, too, but that they’ve been living a lie their whole lives and there is nothing to go back to because there never was anything.  
“No.” She stands up in a motion so swift it takes him unawares.  
“I would say don’t kill anyone, but I guess that would only make you do it faster.”  
“You could kill me, to make sure”, he replies and doesn’t know if he’d like for her to actually do it.  
“Have a rule against killing, me. You should try it sometime.”  
“Sounds boring.”  
She nods with a finality that scares him more than anything else.  
“Then I guess that’s it.”  
He gets up on his feet. “Where are you going?”  
“Away.” She has already crossed the rooftop to where her TARDIS is waiting for her and opens the door without looking back.  
“Why?”  
“I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other.”  
That’s a lie, he has plenty to say and so does she, but he can’t even call her out on it, since she’s already disappeared through the door and closed it behind her.  
He can hear her beginning to sob, just a moment before her TARDIS disappears out of the world with the usual screeching of its breaks, and it makes him want to dance and scream and jump off the roof; but he simply stands and stares, the wine glasses still in hand.


End file.
